The Very Large Array's telescopic "vision" is about to get a whole lot better. The iconic New Mexico observatory, with its giant radio dishes scooping up images of distant stars and galaxies, is getting new electronic guts. On Aug. 7, the telescope's operators pointed two of its antennas at an object known as "3C273," a bright beacon at the heart of a distant galaxy.

Foundation laid for China's largest astronomical station KUNMING, Aug. 14 (Xinhua) -- China on Monday broke ground on construction of its largest astronomical observation station in Yao'an County in the southwest Yunnan Province. Funding for the 340 million yuan (about 49.5 million U.S. dollars) facility was jointly provided by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) and Purple Mountain Observatory (PMO).

Aug. 17--CAPE CANAVERAL Sen. Barack Obama released a comprehensive space policy Saturday that endorsed sending astronauts back to the moon by 2020 as a possible precursor for going to Mars -- the first time he has committed to that goal -- and said the reach for the stars should be a U.S.-led international effort. "Human exploration beyond low-earth orbit should be a long-term goal and investment for all space-faring countries, with America in the lead," the policy paper said.

Chang'e 1, China's first lunar probe satellite, will be tested Sunday when the moon creates a partial eclipse of the sun, officials say. Zijinshan (Purple Mountain) Astronomical Observatory research fellow Wang Sichao said when the eclipse blocks most sunlight from reaching the solar-powered satellite for more than three hours, Chang'e 1 will be forced to operate entirely off its battery supply, China's official state-run news agency, Xinhua, reported Saturday. "The moon's shadow, also a signal blind area, could cause a power shortage in freezing temperatures," Wang said.

Prototypes for the European Space Agency's ExoMars rover are being tested in Britain, the BBC said. The mission is set to launch in 2013, with the rovers landing on Mars in 2015. Chris Draper of UK Astrium said the goal is to build a rover that can surpass previous Mars vehicles.

Aug. 15--It was billed as a debate over the 2006 decision by the International Astronomical Union that kicked Pluto out of the family of planets, leaving just eight. But in the end, after a jocular and noisy tussle before scientists and educators gathered at the Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, both debaters agreed that the IAU's definition only muddied the waters, and that more time is needed for science to sort out the increasingly complex range of objects circling our sun and other stars. The two debaters also expressed delight that a scientific debate has captured so much public attention.

LOS ANGELES -- NASA has delayed the launch of an unmanned spacecraft to the moon to scout for potential landing sites for astronauts. The moon craft is the first step in NASA's program to send astronauts back to the moon and beyond. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter was supposed to blast off from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in early December aboard an Atlas V rocket.

The U.S. space agency says its Phoenix Mars Lander has used an atomic force microscope to take the first-ever image of a single particle of Mars' dust. National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists said the rounded particle has a diameter of about one micrometer, or one millionth of a meter, and is a speck of the dust that colors the Martian sky pink and its soil a distinctive red. "This is the first picture of a clay-sized particle on Mars, and the size agrees with predictions from the colors seen in sunsets on the Red Planet," said Phoenix Lander co-investigator Urs Staufer of the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, who leads a Swiss consortium that made the microscope.

HOUSTON, Aug. 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Flying 220 miles above the Earth aboard the International Space Station, NASA astronaut Greg Chamitoff is ready to take your questions. Mission Control will transmit the questions to Chamitoff weekly. For more on Chamitoff's mission and the International Space Station, visit:

The Hubble space telescope's 100,000th orbit Monday was marked by U.S. astronomers who took a picture of a "dazzling" region of the universe. National Aeronautics and Space Administration scientists aimed Hubble, now in its 18th year of exploration, at the Tarantula nebula, located about 170,000 light years from Earth. "The region is a firestorm of raw stellar creation, perhaps triggered by a nearby supernova explosion," NASA said, noting the nebula is "one of the most active star-forming regions in our local group of galaxies."

The U.S. space agency says it's ready for another fly-by of Saturn's moon Enceladus by the Cassini spacecraft, which will come within 30 miles. The Monday event is designed to allow Cassini to more carefully inspect fractures on the moon from which icy jets of liquid continuously erupt. Cassini imaging discovered evidence for the geyser-like jets on Enceladus in 2005, finding the eruptions create a gigantic halo of ice and gas around the moon, helping supply material to Saturn's E-ring.

LOS ANGELES - A privately held rocket company on Wednesday blamed a design error for its latest failure to reach orbit, which caused the loss of three government satellites and human ashes, including the remains of astronaut Gordon Cooper and "Star Trek" actor James Doohan. The two-stage Falcon 1 rocket, which blasted off from a Central Pacific atoll Saturday night, separated as planned on its way to space, but leftover thrust after engine cutoff caused the first stage to fall back and hit the second stage, according to Hawthorne-based SpaceX. A message left with Cooper's widow Suzan Cooper was not immediately returned.

A Dutch schoolteacher taking part in an online research project has discovered a gaseous object that astronomers say is of unknown origin. Yale astrophysicist Kevin Schawinski and colleagues at Oxford University say van Arkel might have found a new class of astronomical object that's become known as Hanny's Voorwerp -- Dutch for "object." Schawinski asked astronomers around the world to examine the Voorwerp with ground- and satellite-based telescopes.

The European Space Agency says its Rosetta spacecraft has started visually tracking its first target asteroid to determine its orbit with more accuracy. The optical tracking is to continue until Sept. 4, when the spacecraft will be approximately 590,000 miles from the asteroid. The orbit of Steins, with which Rosetta will rendezvous on Sept. 5, closing to a distance of 800 kilometers (500 miles), is only known thanks to ground observations, but not yet with the accuracy we would like for the close fly-by, said Gerhard Schwehm, ESA's Rosetta mission manager.

Likely Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama, at a forum in Florida, said he would not cut the NASA budget if he is elected. Obama, campaigning in the state for a second straight day, spoke in Titusville near the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida Today reported. Under my watch, NASA will inspire the world once again and is going to help grow the economy right here in Brevard County, Obama said.

MOSCOW--An enormous swathe of western Siberian was submerged in darkness Friday afternoon as the moon completely blocked out the sun, enrapturing huge crowds of Russians and foreign tourists. The peak of the total solar eclipse occurred in Novosibirsk, Russia's third largest city of 1.5 million people. The NTV news channel reported that more than 10,000 foreign tourists arrived in Novosibirsk, the largest city under the eclipse's path, to watch it.

The U.S. space agency says its new orbiting gamma-ray telescope, still in its checkout phase, has detected 12 powerful gamma-ray bursts. The gamma-ray bursts, NASA said, were detected by the GLAST Burst Monitor, or GBM, which is one of two instruments on the spacecraft. said Charles Meegan, the GBM principal investigator at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The detectors are working well and we're really pleased with how the instrument is working.

Jul. 28--NASA will turn 50 on Tuesday, boasting five decades of historic events and intrepid research and fueling the lofty hopes of optimistic entrepreneurs who think that practical space tourism to the moon, Mars and beyond is only a matter of time, money and public interest. The main thing, they agree, is finding the customers with the right stuff. "Go out and find that market," S. Alan Stern, who until March was associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, told a group of entrepreneurs gathered in the Crystal City section of Arlington this month.

Jul. 29--TOLEDO -- Nancy Morrison and Karen Bjorkman are survivors. Over the past decades, astronomers at Ohio's universities and colleges have abandoned their observatories to view the heavens from massive telescopes atop mountains in Arizona, Hawaii and South America. For example, Ohio State University mothballed its telescope years ago, and astronomers now share time on the Large Binocular Telescope on Mount Graham near Safford, Ariz.

Jul. 26--In hopes of discovering clues to the origin of life on Earth, the United States and eight other nations signed a landmark agreement at NASA's Ames Research Center this week that scientists hope will lay the groundwork for a new generation of lunar exploration and science. Unlike the all-American Apollo program, the new agreement sees a multinational fleet of robot spacecraft returning to the moon in coming years, with the maturing space programs of countries like India, Germany and South Korea playing key roles in an effort that ultimately would lead to the return of astronauts. "It's sort of like the beginning of a beautiful friendship, like at the end of 'Casablanca,' " James Green, director of NASA's planetary science division, said at Moffett Field this week.